Council Attendance Revealed Ahead Of Arbuckle's Last Meeting

Wednesday, 30 October 2024, 9:11 pm
Article: Maia Hart - Local Democracy Reporter

As Jamie Arbuckle farewells his council seat, data shows the councillor-turned-MP is one of 12 at the table with an attendance rate of 90 percent or higher.

Arbuckle, Marlborough's longest serving councillor, will give his final speech at a full council meeting on Thursday.

Despite juggling the two jobs for a year, figures released under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act show that he finished with a 91 percent attendance rate.

However, he has relied on being able to Zoom into meetings, and had dropped one committee when he entered Parliament.

Earlier this month Arbuckle admitted that juggling the two jobs was becoming increasingly difficult, and he had "felt quite bad" about missing a couple of council meetings.

Despite this, he joined a number of other councillors and the mayor in the feat of attending 90 percent or more of their meetings.

His wife, Wairau-Awatere ward councillor Sally Arbuckle, had attended 100 percent of her meetings. Marlborough Sounds ward councillor Ben Minehan and Blenheim ward councillor Deborah Dalliessi were second equal, missing one committee meeting each, for an attendance rate of 98 percent.

The councillor who attended the fewest was Matt Flight, who attended 71 percent of the meetings he was expected to attend.

Councillors sat on different committees - for example, assets and services and environment and planning - and were not required to attend meetings of committees they did not sit on, but often they went anyway.

Local Democracy Reporting calculated attendance rates based on meetings councillors were expected to attend, including full council meetings.

Flight admitted it had been hard to juggle his council role with other commitments.

He said he started his electrical business at the same time he entered council.

"Both were demanding massive amounts of time. A new business, the first year you're chasing the dollar to try and survive to get by, and doing the council thing at the same time ... It was really stressful."

He said if he ever missed a meeting he would always read the minutes and reports afterwards. The council loaded recordings of all meetings to its website but Flight had never watched any of those.

He said he was constantly in touch with the community through his electrical work.

"I go to probably an average of five to six houses a day. Then I say I'm a district councillor ... I actually answer a lot of questions then as well, which is a massive advantage for me."

Blenheim ward councillor Jonathan Rosene, who had an overall attendance rate of 82 percent, said he had been studying while also working as a councillor. The former police officer was a postgraduate student at the Waikato University, aiming to become a teacher.

He missed all of this year's long-term plan hearings and deliberations because he was on placement.

"It was a balance that was not easy to achieve," Rosene said.

"The lectures are usually recorded so I could always send an apology to my lecturer, go to the committee meeting and then watch the lecture again later on."

There had been lots of study and reading reports while he sat in the car waiting for his children to finish school activities, he said.

Māori ward councillor Allanah Burgess, also the manager of Waikawa Marae, had an 82 percent attendance rate.

As a single mum, Burgess said she needed to work outside of her council role.

She was grateful the councillors were able to video call into meetings, she said.

"I'm really fortunate that the people that nominated me for this [council] position are also the trustees that govern my [marae] role at the moment," Burgess said.

She said the trustees understood she had council responsibilities too.

"It really highlights the reasons why there seems to be this old, stale, male trend within councils - because they're retired and have time," she said.

The councillors with the highest attendance rates said it was not easy to achieve.

Dalliessi said being a councillor was her full-time job.

"I've shut down my business to do it," she said.

"If you are standing for public office, you are making a commitment to give up your time, and if it means not earning as much, then that is the only choice.

"We should have thought about that before ... and we should realise that it's not just, you know, a couple of committee meetings."

Minehan said he had to wind back the scale of his weed control business to fulfil his council obligations.

Community meetings, particularly the Sounds roads, had been "pretty intensive", he said.

"It was worth it though," Minehan said.

"I'm of the opinion if you're going to do it, you need to do it properly and you need to have a proper understanding of the decisions you're making.

"What you don't see is the interaction you have with people, you know, putting them in touch with the appropriate staff and trying to solve little issues."

Sally Arbuckle said going into her role as a councillor she had "some knowledge" of what she had signed up for, given her husband's experience.

"I'm not going to be sitting behind a table making decisions if I don't have the knowledge behind it and have a knowledge of what you as a community want.

"I go to all meetings that I can get to because of that reason."

Mayor Nadine Taylor, who had only missed meetings for other council engagements and bereavement leave, said overall, she was happy with her councillors and their commitment.

"My expectation of councillors probably aligns very closely with community expectation of councillors, that if you're going to put up your hand to represent your community then councillors should prioritise the council meetings and council responsibilities as much as they can," she said.

Taylor, who sits on all committees, thought councillors should reflect on whether they were happy with their own attendance.

"And whether they are happy to go back to the community and explain how they've undertaken their job on behalf of the community that they represent," she said.

Attendance*

• Sally Arbuckle: 100 percent
• Ben Minehan: 98 percent
• Deborah Dalliessi: 98 percent
• Thelma Sowman: 96 percent
• Gerald Hope: 94 percent
• Scott Adams: 94 percent
• David Croad: 94 percent
• Barbara Faulls: 94 percent
• Brian Dawson: 92 percent
• Jamie Arbuckle: 91 percent
• Nadine Taylor: 90 percent
• Raylene Innes: 90 percent
• Allanah Burgess: 82 percent
• Jonathan Rosene: 82 percent
• Matt Flight: 71 percent

* The percentage of meetings is to the end of September and includes committee, full council and extraordinary meetings.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

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